Saturday, February 2, 2013

Wheel

Last night, I checked to see what this week's prompt for Illustration Friday was. "Wheel". Hmm... I was rather uninspired, but hoped something would come to me in my sleep. Instead, I dreamed of wind and snow. No help.

So I thought maybe I'd do something wheelish in relation to groundhogs or Superbowls. Again, nothing came to me.

I looked at some cool photos of ferris wheels and carousels that would have made nice paintings or drawings, but... ugh... couldn't bring myself to tackle any of them. The reason?

I don't like drawing circly curvy things. I mean, sure, there's gonna be curves, but I just wasn't up to having them be the predominant feature of an artplay. Illustration Fridays are for freehand (my rule), and drawing big circles freehand seems too much like WORK.

So in the end, I decided to rebel and pay homage to a handy workhorse for those times when it absolutely, postively has to be round. Our friend the drafting compass. I thought I might do a fancy schmancy one, like architects use, but then came across a reference for the humble mass produced version from our school days.

Abby! That is fabulous! I wish I had half of your talent. I have to draw a poster for work (long story), and ended up calling Amp up to help. I can NOT translate what's in my head, or what I am seeing to paper. Anyway, I am really impressed with this! Like Guano said - it looks so real!

Sometimes our best ideas can be the result of trying to avoid instructions. Really nicely done. I can smell the wood shavings from the little pencil sharpener I used to have when I used one of these :)

They're right, it looks very real. That old school compass reminds me of the ones I used in school. In college I upgraded to a high end K&E set that I still have today. I remember all those hours I spent in drafting classes sketching 3D perspectives. And this was decades before AutoCad.

I'm with the others - it's a great image; right down to the shadows and the "must have" sharp points of the compass and its pencil. I still have a coupla in my not-so-junky drawer in the kitchen, ready for me or one of the kids to use.